Doctors in China have successfully treated a woman with type 1 diabetes using lab-grown insulin-producing cells made from her own tissue. Scientists reprogrammed her cells into stem cells, then grew them into small clusters capable of releasing insulin. One year after receiving the transplant, her blood sugar levels remain normal without any medication. This marks the first time in history that a person with type 1 diabetes has been cured of insulin dependence using cells derived entirely from their own body, not from a donor or embryo, paving the way for personalized treatments for millions.
Sounds like it’s going to be pretty costly, will be interesting to see if this becomes available to everyone or the select few
Insulin used to be costly and complicated to manufacture, now it costs $25-35 for vials of standard basic varieties in non-insane countries with proper regulation of the pharmaceutical and medical industries (sorry united States, this doesn’t include you). This treatment was almost unimaginable just at the turn of the millennium, but is now reality, affordable therapy shouldn’t be impossible although it may take time to lay that groundwork.
That’s synthesizing a chemical vs. a custom treatment for each patient. Still, you’re right, the price will eventually drop.
I dont see why. Culturing cells back into stem cells is very cheap. Maybe expensive to do in bulk, but you dont need to do it in bulk. You only need maybe a dozen stem cells. The hard part would be modifying the cells to produce insulin. But once you have a retrovirus to do that, that becomes almost free considering its absurdly easy to replicate viruses. After that, youd just have to culture the cells to get more, again, very easy.
I havent read the article yet, but depending on how they reintroduce those cells back into the body is almost certainly the most expensive part excluding down investment on originally creating the virus, which only has to be done once.
Edit: see my comment below
Having read the article entirely, the answer is kinda. This particular patient had a lot of complications as a result of their diabetes, so they had to use a bunch of extra medications to prevent complications. No clue how expensive those were, but thats not a cost inherant to the process. If you were “fixed” as soon as your diabetes becomes apparant, that wouldnt be neccassary.
They also did a bunch of animal testing after having gone through the process of creating the cells. Strictly speaking, not meccassary for the future. It was neccassary here as it is a novel approach, and it will continue being neccassary until this is a regularly permormed operation. Once the process is widely regarded to be safe, and weve dialed in the exact process to controlling the production, that sortve testing should become obselete.
Finally, the transplant is absurdly cheap. Basically free.
All together, the reasearch is absurdly more expensive than the process. For most of the world, this should be a very effective, cheap, relatively fast, and noninvasive. This is huge news! Of course in the US you cant afford it.
About a dozen biotechs worldwide doing a similar protocol. Commercial facilities to generate the stem cells are now online.
Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should do something.
- Pharmaceutical Industry
